


bellwether

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentions of Violence, spoilers for pzn 28
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: “Let’s not waste time.” She says, and the scratch of her pen does not falter when she speaks. “Do you think I should produce an heir?”[please be aware, the very end of this fic makes reference to spoilers for pzn 28, though nothing is discussed explicitly]
Comments: 16
Kudos: 52





	bellwether

**Author's Note:**

> the very end of this piece contains spoilers for pzn 28. also, warning for crysanth being briefly shitty and dismissive about gender. nothing severe but it's crysanth.

Being in space always makes him sleep too long. Throws his body’s schedule completely off. Sovereign Immunity is used keeping time by suns, to looking out his window and seeing the fields and orchards that the Shepard’s Crook presides over, wherever they reach. Theirs are the pastures, the mountain towns. The farming villages, the vineyards.

And, of course, the aristocracy. It’s his assignment to Crysanth Kesh that brings him here, to this ship drifting through Kesh space. It’s their regular trip to Partizan for the Summer Passage of Arms, but even after five years in her service he still hates this part. That’s his excuse, at least, for sleeping in and not making his way to her sooner.

Duty requires him to accompany Crysanth for any public appearance. Officially, he has his freedom other than that. Unofficially, he spends most of his waking hours by her side regardless. Always at her right hand. Ready to advise. Crysanth Kesh is arrogant, sure, but not so arrogant that she would have a Sovereign Immunity purely as a symbol. She appreciates his advice as much as his company. Which is to say: for its usefulness.

He finds her in the room she’s taken as her temporary office, a place with high ceilings and walls made from a shimmering grey metal that almost makes up for the lack of windows. Crysanth tilts her head as he approaches, but does not look up from the desk where she is writing. The first draft of a speech for the Summer Passage, maybe. Her desk is fine, dark wood—real wood, not the stuff simply made to look like it was carved from the same tree as the Kesh throne. And she is smoking a long, thin cigarette. This is almost never a good sign.

“Sovereign Immunity. Let’s not waste time.” She says, and the scratch of her pen does not falter when she speaks. Crysanth never calls him by a personal name, not even when they’re alone like this. Not even when they’re more alone than this. He’s only a Sovereign Immunity, sometimes just Immunity when she feels like being more personable. “Do you think I should produce an heir?”

A great deal of what Sovereign Immunities are taught is simply how to not react when a member of the nobility says something ridiculous, or horrifying, or simply wrong. Pause. Consider. Nod, make a knowing face. Let them come to you, let them show their hand a little. These people usually know the answer they want. They just need a higher power to justify it. He learned this growing up and he’s learned it in practice a thousand times during his service.

It takes every ounce of that training not to burst into uncontrollable laughter at the idea of Crysanth Kesh having a child. Or maybe tears. That might be more fitting. Because she’s not talking about a child, she’s talking about an heir. The idea of an heir. Like it’s an object she could buy.

Sovereign Immunity glances reflexively to the door. Not that he’s ever not watched, but he’s not in the mood to deal with any new servants gasping at the way he talks. They’re beyond the point of _if I may be so bold_ and _forgive my rudeness_. “Is there a reason you’re thinking about this now? You’ve never been particularly, uh…”

Crysanth waves him off. “It never seemed pressing, since the future Princept was already an advantageous choice for us. Attempting to bring my own candidate would have been such an ordeal.” Still, she does not look up from her work. “But she’s at the age now where they’ll want her to socialize a little with other children. And it’s not only her. There are plenty of mewling little scions from less important houses. My current rivals won’t live forever.”

It’s the way she says that with a little smile, with some odd certainty that the same is not true for her. It makes him want to turn the desk over. To make her look at him. To tell her that she will die, and her legacy is going to be nothing but cold cruelty.

“Lady Kesh.” He says instead. “I hate to derail your plans, but you’re aware that children are, ah. Unpredictable.”

“Well, that’s why I’m asking you for advice.” She drawls, easily, as if they were talking about any other subject. As if she were asking whether or not to purchase a new piece of furniture. “Do you think it would be worth the inconvenience?”

Last night she signed the order for an assassination that would start a civil war on a tiny, meaningless planet on the fringes of Kesh space. Thousands of children will be left parentless. And will grow up far worse than any child of House Kesh would. There’s no reason why this hypothetical child should be a line crossed. And yet.

Sovereign Immunity is too well trained to let it show, he knows this without a shadow of a doubt. But it feels like he’s shaking on the inside, somehow, like his bones have started to tremble. The shudder of a mech slowly starting up. It's static in his ears, a vibration in the air.

He thinks, not for the first time, about killing Crysanth Kesh. About what it would take, what it would mean. If it would be worth it—it wouldn’t, of course. It would change nothing about the world they live in. It might even make things worse. And it’s not right, that this should be the question that does it for him. Every day she asks him for advice on her decisions that will kill thousands. That will leave people starving and wounded. That will colonize worlds that neither of them will ever see.

There’s just something about the idea of a child that makes it feel different. A child he would know and see, not a faceless collection.

But he doesn’t know that he could do it, anyway, and the internal admission of that makes the shaky sensation stop. It would have to be now, or a moment like now. Just him and his bare hands. Crysanth is trained to fight. And even with his advantage in size and skill and training, she might draw it out, every second another chance for him to realize he can’t go through with it. And those seconds would add up.

“Honestly? Not at all.” He says with easy honesty. “A kid is your road into the next generation of petty diplomats, sure. But that means anyone can do the same to you.”

“I see.” Crysanth does not blink, ashes her cigarette without looking aside. It’s a beautiful ashtray—Apolostolosian ceramic, crisp blue on white. “Not just an inconvenience, but a hostage as well.”

“Exactly.” She would have come to the same conclusion on her own eventually, maybe already had. The role of a Sovereign Immunity is not to give orders, not even to provide new information. A commander can do that. A spymaster can do that. His is to push and pull a little, here and there. To influence, delicately, the course of history so that maybe her next action will kill hundreds instead of thousands. Maybe soldiers will die instead of civilians, maybe adults instead of children.

Fuck, he thinks, is that the best he can hope for? Is that the best thing that can happen in this world?

Crysanth glances at him, just for a moment. Long enough for him to know he couldn’t do it. Not like this, at least. And that’s new, the idea of _not like this_. Like there could be another way to do it. To send this all crashing down. It’s not going to come with Sovereign Immunity and Crysanth Kesh in a room together. But there might be a different time and place. No, he decides in that instant, it’s not a maybe. He will make sure there is. No matter how long he has to wait to make it happen.

The scratching of her pen stops. “Boy or girl?”

“Excuse me?”

“Or something else. An Apolostolosian gender, maybe, those are in vogue.”

Sovereign bites the inside of his mouth, clamps down on the impulse of _you can’t just do that._ No one has ever told Crysanth Kesh she can’t do something, not without being immediately and violently proven wrong. Not even him.

Crysanth looks up again, raises her eyebrow. She knows him too well, catches the second of his hesitation and sits ready to snap her jaws around it.

“A girl.” He says, without thinking. Without really knowing why. “If you were going to have an heir. I still don’t think you should.” He shouldn’t have said it. Now can he imagine too well: Crysanth’s face, but rounder. Crysanth’s eyes, but warmer. Small hands and a smile that he might be the one to provoke.

Even if he wanted this, it’s not real. No daughter of Crysanth is ever going to smile like that.

But Crysanth smiles, cold and pleasant as she rises to indicate that he should leave. “Your advice, Sovereign, is appreciated as ever.”

And he hates it, but he will go. It is not his duty to change things overnight. To be a Sovereign Immunity is to push as subtly as the wind. To plant the seed of an idea. And to wait.

A Sovereign Immunity is trained to be patient, steady. He can wait forever, and never let it show.

He feels the same way, years later, when they tell him. Static in his ears. Shaking on the inside even as he holds steady. It’s just something about the idea of a child.


End file.
